Marketing so good, you couldn’t tell it’s a scam: transcript

Can we talk about the incredible scam that is the diamond industry? [laughter] >> So, I don't know if you've seen this, but diamond prices are just absolutely crashing. So, they're down 70% from their peak and just like 50% from like COVID times till now. Do you know how much a 2 karat lab grown diamond costs now? You want to buy lab grown?

>> Yeah. >> Oh, I don't know. Uh 10 grand a carrot. >> 10 grand a carrot. So that'd be for two karat. You think about 20 grand? >> Yeah. >> Try $148. [laughter] It's the price of dinner. You could have a diamond ring or dinner is the trade right now. By the way, just the whole this whole thing is a marketing masterclass. lab grown versus natural, uh, you know, versus blood diamonds versus, you know, there's so many different ways they position these things. It's crazy. But, um, yeah, I I kind of went back down this rabbit hole of the diamond industry and I just continue to be blown away that this exists, that this is what happened and uh, yeah, I just wanted to talk about it.

>> I don't buy jewelry or diamonds really. You don't either, right? >> For myself, not really. I mean, >> like for your wife, she doesn't seem like >> chain off Tik Tok shop. So, you know, >> your wife your wife is doesn't seem like a particularly like a like that's not her her love language, I don't think. >> Terrible read. Absolutely. Her love language. I'm thinking about this because I was at a diamond shop the other day cuz she's definitely into it. She probably wears like 10 pieces of jewelry at all times on her body. >> Okay. Terrible read. You're right. Whenever I get into this though, it like I start becoming a little bit socialist because I'm like, why is this diamond uh worth it? Like, who says that? Like, well, the market says it. It's like, but that's weird that we've assigned it value. And then I started thinking I'm like, well, but gold has value and all cash is based off gold. And I start like, that's kind of weird that we've collectively agreed that this is like a thing that we want versus I have a friend who owns a diamond business. He's like, Lab Grown is stupid. And I'm like, why? And it starts like kind of messing with my mind a little bit. I don't know if it does with you too.

>> Right. Well, that's kind of why I wanted to talk to you about it because she won't listen to me when I'm like, "But the prices are going down of the commodity." And she's like, "I want the ring." [laughter] So, she's not really listening to it. I think there's a lot of amazing marketing that goes behind this. And I wanted to tell the story. So, so the the brief history of diamonds is like is as such. Diamonds used to be very very rare and it was worn by like kings and queens, royalty. It was a sign of extreme power and extreme wealth. >> And is it purely aesthetic?

>> Yeah, they're very shiny. They're very unique looking and they were rare at the time. So, not a lot of people had them. So, the people who had them were the people in power. It was not a thing about love or a proposal or anything like that. It was literally just like kings and queens. And that was the case for a long time until sometime in the late 1800s. There was a huge discovery of diamonds in South Africa. So there was like this diamonds went from extremely rare to plentiful. You could just go down there, get a scoop like it's BaskinRobins and come out with with diamonds. And so that this was very bad for the diamond industry. Why? Because people who own diamonds or sold diamonds, they depended on the fact that they were rare to charge extremely high prices for these things. And so this was very bad for a small period of time. But a couple of founders, this guy like Cecil Roads and this other guy, they basically started trying to consolidate supply. So they go and they started buying up all the mines and consolidating the supply. It took about

20 years after the discovery of the of the huge new discovery of diamond deposits till they had consolidated and they formed the Debeers company. So if you ever heard of Debeers Diamonds, that's kind of the the merger of these two guys who were consolidating the industry trying to trying to lock up supply. >> Huh. And what they did was brilliant from like a business perspective. It's kind of like uh you know like in science where they study twins and it's like the twins is like this really remarkable thing because it's like nature versus nurture. Well the nature gets held constant and you're you can only look at the differences in nurture especially twins that were somehow raised apart.

It's like gold for scientist. Well, the same thing is true, I would say, from a business and marketing case study around diamonds because here you have this thing that is not actually rare. Uh that was not uh popular. So today, a diamond engagement ring is incredibly common. Majority of people do it in the western world, but uh this was not the case for for a long time. I mean, less than 10% of people would buy um a diamond engagement ring, you know, before the marketing machine kicked in. it was a very, you know, a singledigit percentage of people uh that would do this kind of odd thing. And there was actually all kinds of other ways that people would propose. I've talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs on this podcast and I've got a bunch of takeaways, but one of the big ones, one of them that shocks a lot of the people out there who are product nerds, which frankly I am myself, is that often times in order to turn something that's going kind of good into something that's absolutely amazing is to fix the marketing, not the product.

and in particular fix how many people know about the product. That's like the big thing. It's called attention. Say it with me, attention. And so this team at Starter Story, they put together a free guide. They call it the $1 million attention guide. It's this pretty amazing 39page document that's filled with 15 tactics to get eyeballs on what you are building. And so there's a even a 30 minute recording from Pat who's the founder of Starter Store. He has interviewed hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs. So, he's able to put this together through a bunch of research and experience. And so, if you're interested in getting more attention, which frankly you should be, everyone should be, then you should click the link below in the description or scan the QR code right here. So, a marriage proposal went from a legal contract between the families.

So, it really wasn't about the husband and wife getting down on a knee. It was two families sitting in a room drawing up a contract and usually paying some sort of dowy, some sort of price to literally buy the bride or buy the groom. And so that's kind of the, you know, V1, but then there was all these other ones. They would do maybe a simple like a ring made out of iron because iron was seen as this like strong and it was a strong thing was like a commitment. Uh there was this thing called a regard ring and all the letters of regard it's like ruby, emerald, uh gold, you know, like for for each one of those D being the last one. And they would try to put one of every stone, the tiny one on a ring. So there's all in the history there was like rings were not particularly common and even amongst rings definitely not a diamond ring and so what changed was the marketing machine behind the beers and the jewelry industry.

>> Was it like um a small like it started as a small mom and pop business or did it like combined and it was a conglomerate from day one? >> Well I guess before that there was like independent miners right? So the independent miners would find, you know, deposits, they would be mining them, they'd be selling them kind of centrally. But when the two founders started acquiring up all the spot, by the time they merged, they owned a lot of the supply. And so that roll up was was really really key. And so they had, you know, basically they own 90% of the world's diamond supply. Like it's it's insane. It's like a complete monopoly.

And what they do is they they ration out how much diamonds hit the market. So they they want diamond prices to remain very high. And the way they do that is they control almost mafia style who gets diamonds when and how much. So the jewelers come together. There's like this once a year thing where debeers would then set like for each kind of jewelry market pick the winners give them a certain supply of diamonds. Make sure that they're selling it at certain prices otherwise you're out. Wikipedia says the beers controls 80 to 85% of diamond uh distribution and is and was considered a monopoly. I'm ignorant. Can a foreign a foreign company be an American monopoly? And does that matter?

>> Well, they're doing it. So, I don't think it's [laughter] I don't think it's outlawed because they're doing it. And so, you know, what happened from there? You know, for for a while, business was really good when this was going on. And then the Great Depression happens and consumer spending obviously tanks during the Great Depression. So, Debeers goes and hires this marketing agency. I think it's called N W A Y E R and they basically say look we need something drastic uh you can't do you know nothing we don't just need like an ad or a campaign we need to reposition and reimagine how people are going to think about diamonds because fundamentally you know the great depression is going on people are being very costconcious and like are you going to buy this tiny rock or are you going to pay for you know your rent are you going to pay for food are you going to pay for these other like utility purchases is so how do we get it out of the utility category cuz it just doesn't have any utility. And so they came back and they said, "All right, well, let's position this around

emotions. We're going to relink diamonds instead of to royalty and wealth because people don't have there's not enough people who feel wealthy right now. We're going to relink it to love." And that's where the the idea came of a diamond is forever. you know, this this famous copywriter who came up with this diamond is forever line and this incredible marketing machine kicked in. I don't know if you've heard of this, but they actually sent a woman to schools where she would speak to young teenage girls and educate these girls about diamonds and what they mean and how they work and the four the four C's. This woman um Glattus, she went around the country and she became like the diamond whisperer, teaching young girls to care about diamonds when they were in high school.

and she ended up writing this book called More Sales of Bigger Diamonds [laughter] which is an incredible book title and >> so did Debeers invented the four C's as well. >> Yeah. So they had an insight. So here's some of the marketing insights. So the first insight was uh market to the emotion not to the utility and so they marketed to to the feeling of love. The second thing was um market to the moment. So they figured out to do it around engagements. So, proposal, how do you make it where there's a must-have event where you got to buy it? Sort of like chocolate being sold around uh, you know, Halloween and Easter and like all the all the chocolate sales happen then and fireworks are sold around Fourth of July >> or like uh the Wall Street Journal used to say whenever you graduate college you have to get a Wall Street Journal subscription.

>> They tried. Yeah. Yeah. They tried they tried to do that. That's smart. And so Debeers, what they would do is they would go to Hollywood um directors and actors and they would bribe them with money or free diamonds and they would say, "Cool." But here's the here's the catch. As they're whining and dining, these directors and these actors is that they would say at the climax of the movie when the man's going to profess his love to the woman, he's got to do it with a diamond. And you have to really zoom in on the diamond. You have to show that the diamond is the symbol of him saying, "I love you." Right? And then they created campaigns around this. So they created an agency, a standalone like uh publication that would every week send news of celebrity engagements and diamond uh purchases to 125 different magazines and newspapers so that they would know what to put in the magazine in the newspaper. This news they they made news out of it and there really wasn't like so it was a coordinated PR machine. So they had the high school teachers, they had uh the Hollywood in moment of inception where

you're watching these stories and in the moment of love he gives her the diamond and you just assume I guess that's how we do it, [snorts] right? That I guess that's how it's done. That's how a man and so the girls start to expect it and the guys start to realize it's expected of them. And then they created the um the PR machine that would every week send the news stories about did you hear this guy gave her a 4 karat ring? this guy after he was found out for cheating on her gave her a six karat ring, right? Like, you know, that became the news that they would they made diamonds into news. So, the insight was they realized it is much easier to get somebody who's buying a $6,000 diamond to go up to 12 than to get somebody who's not buying a diamond to spend six grand on a rock all of a sudden. So they said, "All right, forget trying to, you know, we have one layer of marketing that's getting you to realize you need to buy a diamond, but now we need to get you to have, as Glattis said, more sales of bigger diamonds."

>> Dude, that's exactly how I felt, by the way. Did you feel that way? Like when I bought a ring, I thought, "Yeah, $3,500, that's plenty." And then it wasn't even close. Like it [laughter] >> Well, you've heard the kind of rule of thumb. What's the rule of thumb? >> Three times your monthly salary. >> Exactly. Completely arbitrary. So what they realize is like if I just told you you need to spend 15 or $20,000 suddenly that's a big pill to swallow and it's pretty tough to swallow that.

But if I just said look you're going to marry this woman diamond is forever. This is a forever commitment. Should you not spend 10% of what you're earning? Should you not spend 15% of what you're of what you make this one year? Two months of salary, >> dude. 25% 25%. Well, so they they started with two months is is the way that they they talked about it. It's now got crept up inflation to three. So check this out. So u look at these ads. This first one says she mar she married you for richer or poorer. Let her know how it's going. [laughter] And and then uh this one is he still knows how to send chills up and down my spine. And it's a picture of the back of the necklace that's sitting at the top of her spine. Good. You know this one.

Good things take time. The best take a billion years. >> That's great. and and that like how diamonds are made and they would say like you know look at this last one how two months of salary wound up on Julie's finger and they really started to anchor that the expectation the cuz nobody knows how much should I spend what's a good amount and instead of leaving it up to the opinion they created the benchmark and then you could be a cheapkate and go less or you could step up and be a man and do it and or you could hey you could overperform go ahead spend six months instead of two and so this idea idea of just two months of salary for this forever commitment was a totally different anchoring uh than basically saying put a car on her finger, right? Like you either have this car or you could have this rock and uh they figured out how how to reposition that.

>> The takeaway uh basically one of the most famous advertising books of all time is Olgv on advertising and I think it's like chapter 11 or something. David Olgav says um the headline of the chapter is like long- form direct mail copywriting and then the sub headline is my secret weapon and it all started with this direct response long form mailing copywriting because you start learning what motivates people and you can express your ideas a little bit more and what you're seeing there was not long form but like that's the exact stuff he's referring to.

>> Exactly. You're exactly right. If you look at like if you made a list of the business problems on the left and then the marketing persuasion solution on the right. Okay. So here's what it would look like. So diamonds were discretionary and so they fluctuated. Good times people would buy and in bad times people would not buy. Well they turned it into a expected purchase for an engagement. So that was the business the marketing solution to the business problem. Uh next one. Diamonds are expensive. Well, they needed to make the expense mean something beyond the cost of it. So, diamond is forever. That it became a symbol of of love. That it was going to be, you know, your commitment to this woman and it was a symbol of how committed you were. Then the next one, consumers are not sure which one to buy.

Is this one good enough? Seems good enough. I can't tell the difference. Like, if you ever hold up two of the diamonds, can't tell the difference. And you know, and and like whether it's VVS1 or VVS2, you know, like to the naked eye, it's not something you could tell. I mean, we we walked out of the diamond shop and I brought my mom with me. The first thing they do is they clean their rings cuz just like if you like you're supposed to basically like put it in Dawn soap and then clean it with like a toothbrush every week or two. And most women don't do it even every 6 months really. It's just like, you know, when do you make time for this? And as soon as you do it, your ring looks totally different. It's like, you know, hey, you got a ring upgrade just from a toothbrush and some Dawn soap. Um, but like you know these like small distinctions of like flawless versus virtually flawless versus internally flawless like these these things can drive the price up but to the naked eye.

I mean you need a microscope to to even see the difference between most of these things. And so they created the four C's, right? The four C's gave them language to use for pricing discrimination. And this is very common. This happens with wine as well. The reality is most people were not able to distinguish between what's a better wine and a worse wine just from a taste test. And so they created a huge gradient of pricing of the pricing curve by introducing language, distinct language, an insider club of language where literally you can become a Somalier which is like getting your PhD in wine and you could because you know you understand this language of wine better than anybody else. And so they created an entire professions around it. And u >> what's interesting is there's I I I remember this and I was curious about it and now I had to remind myself. There's it's called GIA. That's the third there's a third part. So the three C's are done via a third party which is called the Gemological Institute of

America. It's a nonprofit uh that does hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue. And it's like the grading system of this which is like pretty brilliant, >> right? And yeah, the these things work symbiotically. They're in cahoots, [laughter] right? It's sort of like Michelin star restaurants. Well, you have the Michelin guide, right? So, you have the the greater and then you have the restaurants that achieve it. Once you achieve it, your line is going to be, you know, out the door and you can charge absurd prices for it. And so, these things work together in a way, right? like the the the the rankers and then the the rankes can benefit from each other in in this way and they often will fund often in different industries they'll they'll sort of fund or um promote the the nonprofit neutral party because it's good for everybody if you if you have that versus if it was absent if there was none of these. Right.

>> If a diamond is worth uh you know how much you show your love for her, what's a lab grown diamond worth? >> Well, it's actually pretty interesting. So lab has become 60 plus percent of the market. >> Wow. >> It has grown like crazy. And so just it's growing. It's a freight train. It's a majority. It's already the majority. It'll be the super majority soon because what you can get for the price you can get it. I mean a lab will be 80 to 90% cheaper than the same quality um natural diamond.

>> Can and you could tell the difference with a microscope or you know however they do it. >> It is indistinguishable. You really cannot tell. uh you can't tell the naked eye cannot tell at all. I think a jeweler can with enough testing figure you know uh figure this out and so this it presented a big problem for debeers. So what did debeers do? First they tried to just discredit it. So they were like uh who want that's phony fake we are real natural. Um and so they tried to use language to discredit it but the value proposition was too strong because you put it on your finger it looks fantastic. It is a real diamond.

It is chemically indistinguishable and the price was so much better that people started gravitating towards it. So then Debeers switched their tactics. They then launched their own lab product and intentionally undercut the lab market by a lot to almost even further create a big spread between natural and lab so that they would distinguish between real quote and not real. And so that was the the sort of second marketing attack they did on it was to say, "Okay, okay. You like lab? Here, have lab. Dirt cheap.

Just take it. Just take it. It's worth nothing." >> You go to the deer store and they take away you're like, "Where's the lab section?" And they take away your glass of champagne and hand you a cup of Kool-Aid. [laughter] >> It's so funny. We went to the store and it's like they're like, "Do you have an appointment?" And I'm like, "You realize there's nobody in the store, right? There's no one else here. There's two of you >> and there's two of us. >> There's nobody else here. We need an appointment. And then they're like, "You need an appointment." It's like, "Okay, cool." So, we get an appointment cuz I'm like on my phone. In 5 seconds, I'm like, "Hey, I got an appointment. Guess what?" [laughter] I went to Wetzel's pretzels and I got an appointment in the meantime. I'll be back. So, I walked back in and they take us to this private room. So, there's like secret door, private room. What's in the private room? I have I have no idea. It's the same again. There was nobody in the public room, so we didn't need any privacy. There's nobody in the store, but the aura of like, you are entering the vault. You're making a very

considered decision here, and congratulations on this decision that you've made. She actually I think she literally congratulated us on sitting down [laughter] for like for going on this journey with them. I was like, what's happening? And then um you know, takes out her gloves and the felt thing to handle everything. The whole thing is it's cirto so ole it's a show the whole thing is theater and I love it I appreciated all aspects of it and I was just like kudos to you and I was like so what do you think about the prices of lab you know of of diamonds nowadays it's fall you know fallen off a cliff and then she's like well you know I just work here [laughter] I was like okay fair enough but but actually very interestingly even though the wholesale prices have dropped off like that chart if you go to the jewelry store they're roughly the same price down like 15 20%. The jewelers, the retail stores are just keeping the markup because they don't want to cave and offer lower prices because for most people it's pretty hard to access a

wholesale diamond and then then what? You got to turn it into jewelry yourself. It's like kind of complicated. So very interestingly, even though the price of the diamonds has fallen off, the price of the store has not and they're just capturing a fat margin right now. Whenever I hear these stories, I have like sort of a a takeaway is that you can actually change perception and I still think that you can do the same thing today with a variety of topics. It will take forever. I mean, Debeers is 180 years old, I think. Uh, but there is something interesting about changing mass perception and potentially starting small.

>> What do you think? What's what's another example where that might either is being done in the modern day where you feel like this kind of switch is being made or this this persuasion is happening or that it could happen. What's what's >> Well, I can give you a bunch of it. Well, here's an example of one. I mean, like the vitamin industry, right? A lot of vitamins and a lot of like supplements, I don't know if there's actual proof. I don't know if you actually feel a difference, but they'll do certain things like make it taste a certain way where you're like, "Ooh, they must be working." Uh, so I think that's happening. But if I was working in the data center industry, I would go and study all this stuff. I'm like, how do you change perception? Because that has to be one of the most hot topics uh there is right now. And it's very divisive and it seems unilaterally unpopular at least amongst uh 70% of people. And so I think the data the data center industry can take note from a lot of this stuff.

>> Well, yeah, I think that's uh supplements for sure. It it fits there. I would say also I think Bitcoin if I watch the last kind of 1015 years of Bitcoin you know Bitcoin went from this like very fringe anarchist sort of cyberpunk like thing where it's people who uh you know you know don't trust the government and want their own money and self-custody and cryptography and all these things are like pretty hard to access and I feel like they created different narratives the the industry almost Not like there was one person, but the the group of Bitcoiners basically over time created different narratives and memes, right? So, it used to be seen as a currency and that really wasn't working because it was hard to transfer and the price fluctuated too much to be useful as a currency. And so, the reframing of it as digital gold was like a very important thing to happen because you could see it, oh, it's it's

like gold. It's like bars I need to stack up. And then they added on top of that like total, right? Like hold hold is the thing. And then they called it, you know, instead of being the loser who held it at uh, you know, 100 grand and now it's at 20 grand and you're just sitting on it like a like a a punk. And they were like, "No, you have diamond hands." >> Yeah. >> Oh, diamond hands. That's what it means to hold through adversity. >> And and actually, this is a big part of same thing with diamonds where because diamonds are forever. One of the key parts of that, the key parts of linking it to love and engagement is that they they killed the resale market. Nobody resells their diamonds.

>> And yet we all buy we buy the real ones because we say appreciates or holds value. No one no one sells them. I I mean I don't think >> Well, no one sells them because if you bought a used diamond from some other failed engagement, what does that mean about Yeah, that's like not a good sign. >> Naming your boat Titanic. And then same thing like even if you no longer wear your ring or like your ring, you don't just go pawn it because oh that was that was sentimental, right? That was our engagement. I'm always going to keep it. I'll pass it down like a family heirloom. So what does that do? Take supply off the market. And the same thing happens in the Bitcoin industry.

Diamond Hands and Hodal is about taking supply off the market. It's about not having you quick to sell your your your coins. And then they did things like how do you get social proof? So, the way that diamonds in Hollywood movies showed up, well, Bitcoin figured out how to get people to put the red laserized picture on their profile pictures so you could kind of identify like who's a Bitcoiner. Oh, he he is, he is, he is, she is. Wow, all these people that I kind of know and see and respect. So, they created a a way to signal that yeah, I'm part of the club. And then for those people, you get to be part of a club. Belonging. One of the most powerful motivators for people is a sense of belonging. And so, they g they create a thing that worked. And then every cycle I feel like there's a new narrative that pops up or they'll they'll use phrases like this is the super cycle. It's like yeah the last cycles were good but oh we're about to go into the super cycle or the final cycle or this like that where you're like don't it's basically like a huge FOMO machine where it's like don't miss out. [laughter] >> Stupidest words man like oh it's a it's a triple serious stacker. [laughter]

>> All the other coins try to do it too. Like Ethereum there's like this thing called the flipping where it's like the day where the Ethereum market cap will flip Bitcoin's market cap. And yeah, these are like kind of subculture. Most average people haven't heard these. But if you're in the industry at all, you you kind of have heard these. And there's a part of you that will think twice before you get out because you're like, is it time? Is this the super cycle? Some smart people are saying this is the super cycle or the flipping might happen. And when that happens, it's going to do this, you know, like. And so you don't want to miss out uh which is which is obviously important for the thing to work. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy in the same way that the marketing machine behind diamonds became self-fulfilling.

>> Dude, words are so great, man. And I was reading this book about the greatest generation is pre-boomers. So it's the the the folks Go ahead, make your joke. >> Nobody Nobody said nobody says that about us. [laughter] The millennials didn't get that distinction. >> I could just see that like coming out of your lips. Uh well, I was reading about this like um the greatest generation which is uh World War II u basically World War II folks. And um you know people talk about like oh it was so much better back then. Not a chance. Not a chance. Like first of all it was like 70 or 65% of soldiers were like we shouldn't be here. We should not be doing this. Uh racism was rampid obviously. Uh there was like huge amounts of strikes and walkouts way more than nowadays. And it was just this whole thing about like this idea of the greatest generation. Crime was way higher. Juvenile delinquency was way higher. Like we are it was not the greatest generation. It was a good generation just like every other generation can be a good generation. It was just this idea that like when you

and I were 21, millennials were on. Now Gen Z, soon it'll be I don't know what the next name is. But this idea of like these words and phrases that we use to look back, they're just mostly nonsense. >> It's so powerful. I mean, imagine if you could just convince everybody that we're about to have the golden decade, whatever that means. >> But like imagine if everybody believe if if you got that to be incepted in people's minds. Because what happens is the opposite of paranoia is something called paranoia. Paranoia is feeling like everything is working against you and paranoia is feeling like the universe is kind of conspiring in your favor. And so imagine if you believe that oh this is it this is what people have been talking about. This is the golden decade that really great things there's more opportunity than ever great things are going to be happening news the good news for the first time will be outweighing the bad news. Well what do you do? You start paying you start looking for evidence that supports the belief and that changes the way you will live and the way you will act and it will like again be a bit self-fulfilling in that way where you can get kind of

like manifestation to happen at a uh like a civilization scale right rather than an individual. By the way, have you seen this site anyhum ever? So check this out. So it's just anyhum.com. So watch this. We'll do it. So Sam, we're going to It says 100 What is this? 100 Is that 100 billion? Yeah. 100 billion people have ever lived in the history of the world. >> Okay, >> choose one. So, you're going to draw a random life out of all of the lives that have ever been lived. All right. Ready?

>> 900. Oh, you're doing it. All right. >> Yeah. Yeah. Ready? I'm going to click it cuz I'm screen sharing here. This is This is for you, though. We're going to see how you do. We'll compare what you get to your current life. [laughter] All right. So, uh if it was luck of the draw. So, the first question is when would you have been born? So there's this, you know, long time scale, but you know, population boom means that most people were born kind of in the last, I don't know, uh, you know, few hundred years. So let's draw >> 10,000 years or so, I think. Uh, yeah, this is this is hard. There's a lot of math. Okay, so I got 1,200 CE.

>> I don't even know what CE what is CE before uh year zero. So uh 3,200 years ago. >> Okay. So Okay. So, there was 26 million people born that year. Um, so already you're kind of screwed. Uh, let's see what else. Where would you have been born? >> Is that right? >> In present day present day Yemen. >> Yemen. Okay. >> So, so there was 2 million people living there back in the the year 1200 CE. Um, you're a boy. Congratulations. Uh, here's what your life would have been like. You would have been married at 25.

Uh, you'd have six and a half kids. uh unfortunately life expectancy was only 29 years. Half your kids would die before the age of five. Um let's say and how would they die? An unnamed fever was the most likely cause of death. After that, pneumonia, dentury, smallox, and other other uh other calculations. Oh, your child was born and died at 9 months. >> Oh my god. >> So So [laughter] this is like just a put in perspective.

um style of of website about like how lucky we are literally to just have been born where you're born in the year that you're born. Um how how incredibly lucky you are out of the 100red billion people that have ever lived of humans that have ever lived in the in the history of of time. >> My name is Tariq. I was born in the Arabian Peninsula Peninsula around the 1200 CE in a >> stone six sixbedroom stone house. This is pretty stacked.

>> Yeah, that's all right. [laughter] >> They had stairs back then. What's going on >> that? Okay, let's see. Oh my gosh, this is awesome. >> First of first child of three. Uh >> Call to Death Unnamed Fever. This is crazy. This is cool. >> Um All right, that's it. That's the pot.